Forever Blue With Ian Cheeseman: Just The Ticket

Manchester City roared back to their best against Norwich City during their first home Premier League game, with a full crowd, since 19th February 2020.

It was a day when people who have become “football friends” were reunited. I saw lots of hugs and smiles before kickoff and of course there were plenty at the end of the game too. 

Fans arrived earlier than normal for the long awaited return of fans, but that was because the club also introduced a new digital ticketing system which was causing a great deal of anxiety, especially among the less tech-savvy supporters. I’m not afraid to admit that I class myself among them. My family and I have three season tickets and I had to enlist the help of my twenty something son to make sure things ran smoothly. My wife’s proved to be the big issue and it took him a couple of hours to finally install the ticket successfully. 

My mate Charlie, who is from an even older generation than me, was stressed for about a month and rang me most days, but eventually he got things into a position where he could print off a paper version at home. As I’m relatively well known to a lot of City fans I had hundreds of texts, tweets and private messages, plus a few phone calls from equally anxious fellow Blues. One fan, I know of, ended up buying a smart phone at a cost of over £200 just so that she could have a place to download her ticket to. 

On matchday, a three o’clock kick-off, I was down at the ground by eleven o’clock. Since City had last played a game in front of a full crowd work on the new indoor arena has started in earnest, meaning that lots of parking spots have gone and of course there’s a vaccination centre at the indoor tennis centre, so that has meant car parking there has been lost too. I arrived early to make sure I found somewhere for my car. 

On a matchday I film a matchday vlog, which you can find on YouTube, so I needed to be early to have time to do that too, but because of fears of long queues caused by confusion and/or technology failure, I wanted to enter the stadium no later than 2pm. I bumped into one of the senior City staff who was responsible for this new era and he assured me that 125 extra staff were on duty to help the fans and I could see that there were small gazebos dotted around for that purpose. 

There were a few issues, but by and large things seemed to run fairly smoothly. Fans had taken the advice to arrive early, which clearly helped. This week City face Arsenal with a 12.30 kick-off. If I follow the same timetable as last week, I’ll leave home, in Oldham, at 8am. Digital ticketing, whether you like it or not, is happening everywhere. We live in the 21st century, but I can’t deny I’d rather have a plastic card for the season. 

On the field City swept any stress the fans had suffered to be there by sweeping relegation favourites Norwich City away. Gabriel Jesus revelled in his new wide role and the Blues bagged five without reply. On the season’s opening day they’d lost at Spurs, but this was totally different. They won without Kevin De Bruyne, who had a slight injury issue, which made the win even more impressive. I have a feeling that City are still not fully in their stride, despite the impressive nature of their win. After Arsenal on Saturday, there’s a two week break for International games, but I suspect the Blues will hit peak form just at the right time as the Premier League and Champions League return in September. I called my matchday vlog, “Just the Ticket” this week, and the Norwich games certainly was both on the field and off it. 

Former City player Paul Lake was my guest on the Forever Blue podcast this week and you can hear some of his thoughts this Friday at 7pm on Tameside Radio 103.6Fm which I present, as I do every week, Sports Talk!